


Everything's Weird and We're Always in Danger

by beethechange



Category: Buzzfeed Unsolved (Web Series)
Genre: Fuck or die-ish, M/M, mostly mediocre smut tbh, or a sex ghost maybe, possibly dub-con, sex pollen made them do it, too many adverbs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-24
Updated: 2018-04-24
Packaged: 2019-04-27 11:38:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14424624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beethechange/pseuds/beethechange
Summary: Ryan perches on the edge of the bed, an indistinct shape that Shane can only just make out in the dark, so he turns the lamp back on. He wants to see Ryan’s face, wants to know that he is alright. Ryan’s cheeks are damp, his hands fisted in the hideous flowered duvet.“It won’t go away,” Ryan says miserably. “I’ve been like this since we got here, basically, and it won’t fucking—”“Ah,” Shane says. “Well, you know, sometimes fear…adrenaline…they can affect people. Physically.” He waves his hands indistinctly crotchward. “It’s a, a scientifically known phenomenon.” Shane feels a little better staying in the realm of scientifically known phenomena.





	Everything's Weird and We're Always in Danger

**Author's Note:**

> Title's from "You Were a Kindness" by The National. I didn't really do a lot of research, so I'm sure lots of stuff is wrong! Buckle up!

  _Part 1._

They’re inside the inn for less than five minutes when Ryan says, predictably, “I feel weird in here.”

“Do you really?” Shane asks, looking around at the well-appointed and beautifully-restored lobby of the Savannah boutique hotel they’re “investigating” tonight. “Because I feel like I’m about to kick off a fancy as hell vacation I absolutely cannot afford. This place is beautiful.”

Sometimes, when they’re poking around filthy, abandoned mental asylums and spider-infested doll nightmares, Shane can _almost_ get Ryan’s fear, can empathize with it if not feel a twinge of it himself. He’s not above getting a little creeped out by a creepy place, but this inn is gorgeous and fully-operational. They’ve bought the place out for the shoot, but just last night it was crawling with guests, and tomorrow it’ll click and whir back into motion again.

They’ll be lucky if it even reads as spooky in the footage, not that Shane’s complaining. He’s already thinking with pleasure of how soft the sheets will be, how good the water pressure in the shower. If he can get Ryan to chill out, he might even get a good night’s sleep out of this for once.

“Yeah, I do,” Ryan says, a little belligerently. “It’s nice, but…”

“Can you be more specific? What kind of weird? Help us understand, Ryan!” Shane says, teasing.

Shining his flashlight around the corners of the lobby, trying not to light the registration desk _too_ well lest the two Dell computer monitors ruin the vibe for the cameras, Ryan narrows his eyes speculatively. He looks like he’s going to say something, but then his eyes dart to the camera in TJ’s hand and he bites it back. In the dim light of their flashlights it’s hard to be sure, but Shane thinks he looks a little flushed.

“No, _asshole_ , I can’t explain it. Just…just weird.” He half-shrugs, barely more than a twitch of a shoulder.

Looking back, Shane realizes that was his first clue, one he missed and should not have. Ryan’s usually unflinching and unabashed when the cameras are rolling—completely devoid of shame, no matter how stupidly he reacts to stray breezes and radiators clicking on. It is, of course, part of the success of the show. If Ryan wasn’t willing to run screaming from perfectly benign suburban split-levels in the middle of the night because a flashlight turned on, what did they have? Nothing.

“Ok, dude. Well, let me know if at any point you feel like sharing with the class.”

Shane’s own flashlight lands on a portrait of a woman on the far side of the room, just to the left of the staircase leading to the guest rooms. She’s beautiful too, wearing a white dress that Shane would classify with his very limited expertise as “old-timey” and a forlorn expression.

“You really don’t—you don’t feel that?” Ryan asks, his flashlight’s beam meeting Shane’s on the portrait.

“No? I mean, I feel kind of hungry and kind of sleepy, but those are normal feelings I feel all the time.”

Not entirely true. Shane also feels _pumped up_ , and suddenly, genuinely curious about this place in a way he rarely experiences on an Unsolved shoot. There’s no reason for it. He’s sure Ryan will regale him with versions of the same boring-ass stories he’s heard dozens of times in dozens of places. Star-crossed lovers murdered by her blueblood father in a rage, or doomed Confederate soldiers marching off to war, or sad twins who died tragically in a fire. He’s amped all the same, energized and a little shaky with it, like he’s taken a shot of espresso.

“Let’s get to snooping! We’ve got some ghosts to bust, right?” Shane claps twice, _chop-chop_ , and then immediately feels stupid about it.

*

The thing is, though, that Ryan is suspiciously not-spooked, and it’s going to make for a shitty, boring episode. They explore the inn’s bar area, rumored to be a hotbed of ghostly activity, and Ryan barely even jumps when Shane accidentally-on-purpose knocks into a rack of glassware. He’s distracted, tapping nervously on tables as they stand around talking about the spirits said to turn on the beer taps in the middle of the night. When they sit down to drink a mint julep—and Shane _absolutely_ feels they should be trying to work alcohol gimmicks into every episode if possible—Ryan’s knee jiggles under the table the whole time.

Shane finds that the more distracted Ryan becomes, the more he wants to act out, to force a reaction from him. He wants to hide behind the bar, jump out when Ryan walks past. He wants to dare Ryan to go sit in a dark closet and then listen just outside the door to the whimpering as his panic grows. He wants to brush his fingers along the back of Ryan’s neck, gently, and then blithely claim ignorance when Ryan loses his mind about it. He wants to— _hmm_.

 _That’s different_ , Shane thinks, and he shuts it down.

The energy he felt earlier has grown to a constant thrum inside his rib cage, a flutter that feels exactly like he’s had too much caffeine or a shot of adrenaline straight into a vein. He doesn’t really do drugs, but this is how he imagines snorting coke would feel, and he sees why people would do it. Shane feels like he could run a marathon. He notices, in a detached but interested sort of way, that his left hand is clenching and unclenching without his permission.

A few paces away, Ryan’s breathing speeds up and shallows out. He’s almost panting as he halts abruptly, bending over at the waist.

“Dude, are you ok?”

Ryan holds up a hand, still bent double, and just _breathes_.  
  
“Did you see something? Hear something?” Shane asks, torn between concerned and hopeful. He sneaks a glance at TJ behind the camera, wondering if Ryan is sick, if he needs to call off the shoot, head back out to the Marriott where the crew is staying a few blocks away.

“No, I just—you’re really totally fine, Shane? Totally—normal?” Ryan’s voice when he says _normal_ , strained and tight, sounds like he means something else. His eyes are wide and shining in the light, rows of glasses reflecting in them thanks to the mirror behind them and the lighting they’ve bought with for the shoot in front. Shane wants to see his eyes go even wider, wants to make them squeeze closed in surprise, wants to— _wait,_ _what?_

“Yeah. Normal.”

*

Finally, after they get all the shots TJ wants downstairs, they head upstairs for the main event.

“Here it is, room 204,” Ryan says, unlocking the door with an old-fashioned-looking key. It’s a nice touch. “This is the center of hauntings here at the inn. Guests have reported being visited by a ghost named Anne. Nobody knows who Anne is—though several Annes have been associated with the property over the years—or what she wants from them. One story goes that over 150 years ago Anne’s husband died tragically after being thrown from his horse, and then in her grief she threw herself from the balcony in this room to join him in death.”

Ryan and Shane both glance across the room. Along the far wall of the room stands a massive four-poster king bed. Shane has no explanation for the full-bodied chill that runs up his spine. He also cannot help but notice that there is no balcony.

“I think there must have been a balcony at one point,” Ryan says lamely.

“Mmm. Romantic,” Shane says drily. “I hope that if I die a sudden untimely death my wife just tosses herself off the nearest parapet, unable to live without me for one single day.”

“Dark, dude.”

“Yeah, I know you’re supposed to be like— _oh, honey, I hope you’ll find love and happiness again after me_. But no, really, I want to see that desperate grief. Otherwise how will anybody know how true and all-consuming our love was?”

Ryan laughs helplessly, a little breathlessly, and Shane feels mollified. That’s more like it. They can salvage the episode with some friendly banter, even if the ghost angle’s a bust even by Shane’s admittedly low standards.  

“I sometimes wonder how people know the name of the ghost that’s haunting them,” Ryan says speculatively. “Does the ghost, like, introduce herself?”

“Like—like— _oh, hey, I’m Anne, don’t mind me, just here to scare the shit out of you while you try to enjoy your holiday_.”

“Well, it’s rude to just pop into somebody’s bedroom without introducing yourself first, and Southern ladies are known for their manners, right?”

“Yeah,” Shane agrees. His flashlight has just landed on a portrait on the wall. It’s the same woman from downstairs, and she’s wearing a truly epic hat. The giant bow in the back rises behind her head like wings. “And for their fucking gigantic hats, apparently. Look at this!”

Ryan peers at the painting too. “Hey, maybe that’s Anne? She looks friendly.”

She doesn’t look friendly.

*

They poke around the room, where they’ll be spending the night, and get a little more footage with the full set-up of cameras and lights. Then it’s time for the crew to head back to the Marriott, and for Shane and Ryan to settle in.

Shane busies himself setting up their camera on a table across from the massive bed. Ryan heads for the bathroom, and he emerges a few minutes later wearing sweatpants and a soft-looking Buzzfeed t-shirt with just the lightest fraying at the hem. He looks flushed and a little sweaty, which is weird because the A/C is cranked up full-blast.

“I’ve gotta say, man, you don’t seem that scared here. You just spent a full five minutes alone in a bathroom and didn’t shriek _once_. I’m proud of you, little dude,” Shane says. He knows he’s goading, talking down to Ryan, condescending to him. Poking for a reaction.

“Not—not scared,” Ryan agrees, scowling. “But the lights were on. Jackass.”

“So what can we expect of our stay here this evening?” Shane asks, mostly for the camera. “The usual bumps and unspecified eerie noises? Wordless shrieks? Demon possession?”

“Dude, don’t joke.” 

“Seriously. How does our Anne get her jollies?”

“Some guests report their belongings missing when they wake up. Some people report that it feels like the bed is—is whispering, to them.  Sheets tugged off the bed.”

“The bed whispers? What does it say? Like, _ooh, come lay on me, I’m so comfortable_?” Shane waves his hands in front of his face, a universally-recognized “come hither” gesture in parody.

“Just indistinct whispers, I think.  And—some guests have reported that when they turn the lights out they hear a woman sobbing from what sounds like the far corner of the room.”

Shane cackles. “Oh, no, can you imagine? Like, a couple’s here on their honeymoon, they just want to bone down—”

Ryan snorts.

“They turn off the light to get down to business, and then—some ghost chick starts crying and ruins the whole thing. Real boner-killer, Anne!”

Ryan wheezes out a laugh, and Shane feels himself flushing with accomplishment. He tries to keep the momentum going.

“It’s really kind of a shame, because this room is clearly giving off honeymoon suite vibes. There’s that fucking ridiculous bed, just begging for people to screw in it—maybe that’s what it’s whispering!—and then Anne comes along and just ruins it for everybody.”

“Yeah,” Ryan agrees, but he’s not laughing anymore. “Poor bed. Blue-balled again.”

Shane realizes, too late to do anything about it, that he’s gone and made it weird. Generally, he thinks, one ought to avoid talking about people having sex in a bed before crawling into said bed with one’s coworker and friend.

“Well, at least we know it’s used to disappointment!” Shane says jovially. He turns slightly away from Ryan to unbutton his shirt and as he does, he sees Ryan looks away with a jerk of his head, giving him a modicum of privacy. The air feels thick between them all of a sudden, heavy and uncomfortable, and Shane gets that buzzing behind his ribs again. _I feel weird in here_ , he thinks, and goes into the bathroom to brush his teeth and finish changing.

*

When Shane emerges a few minutes later, Ryan’s still not in bed. He’s leaning against the wall by the door in a way that does not look comfortable, fiddling with his phone.  
  
“Signal’s shit in here,” he says, not looking up. “Who knew you could go to the middle of a modern American city in the year of our lord 2018 and not get cell service?”

“I mean, it is Georgia,” Shane says.

“I was going to say it could be ghost-related, but now that you’ve gone and insulted an entire state we’re going to have to edit it out. Good work.”

Shane climbs awkwardly into the giant bed, folding his limbs in under the covers, trying to ignore how not tired he feels. Every bit of his body feels awake. He plugs his own phone into an outlet by the bedside table to charge, and when Ryan still doesn’t move to join him he takes a closer look.

Ryan’s face is stricken. There’s color high on his cheeks and receding down his neck and under the neckline of his t-shirt in a way that makes Shane want to keep staring, and then makes him need to look away. His eyes are dark, pupils huge. His jaw is clenched. His hands are clenched. He looks, Shane thinks, like he’s about to throw up or pass out, or both.

“Dude, are you OK?”

Ryan blinks, tosses his phone onto a nearby chair.

“No. Yeah. I can’t talk to you about this, it’s—it’s too weird. Especially if you’re not—if you’re fine. Don’t worry about it.”

“Are you going to sleep, or are you going to stand over there sweating and staring at me all night?”

Ryan closes his eyes and leans his head back until it knocks gently on the wall. Shane is faced with an expanse of smooth-skinned, unblemished neck, muscles of jaw and throat working as Ryan swallows. Shane is not someone who usually notices his friends’ necks one way or the other, so this whole thing is starting to feel pretty ludicrous.

“Seriously, are you too short to get in this huge-ass bed and you’re too embarrassed to tell me? It’s okay. I’ll give you a boost.” Shane laughs at his own joke, but the laugh comes out all wrong, sort of throaty and way deeper than his actual laugh. _What is going on?_

Ryan just makes a noncommittal “hmm” sort of noise. He doesn’t even snap back at Shane’s dig on his height. Shane can feel his heart beating in his chest, in his wrists, can see Ryan’s own heartbeat in his throat. The flush has made its way down Ryan’s neck, down his arms, all the way to his hands, which are pressed against the wall like he’s holding himself up. Shane wonders— _wait, no, what_ —whether all of him is flushed like that.

He finally lets himself glance down, and he sees immediately that Ryan is hard. Like— _really_ hard. The sweatpants are doing nothing to conceal it. Shane’s insides buzz. He smells—is that _perfume_?

“Oh. Jeez. Uh.”

Ryan’s hands fly up to cover his face. “Shut up, dude. Please.”

“No, it’s—it’s fine. It’s whatever. It’s—” Shane starts to say _normal_ , but he’s not sure that’s strictly true, and he’s not a liar.  

Ryan shudders. He reaches over and turns off the camera.

“I’m really sorry,” he says to Shane. His shoulders are hunched over, like he’s willing himself to just disappear through the floor.

“You don’t have to apologize. I’m not, like, mortally offended by your boner. Just get in bed, and we’ll turn the lights off and maybe Anne will start up her crying routine and hey presto!”

Still looking mortified, Ryan takes a deep breath and then turns the camera back on. He lays on the bed, taking great care to avoid looking Shane in the eye, not getting under the covers despite the chill of the A/C. Shane settles on his side, back to Ryan. _Okay_ , he thinks, flicking off the lamp, and closes his eyes to sleep.

*

Shane does not sleep. He lies there, eyes closed, mind racing. Pulse racing. In some far-off corner of his mind, he recognizes that he is half-hard in his own sweats, but the urgency he feels is somewhere in the vicinity of his stomach and not in his dick. There’s a sweet smell in the air, a perfumed jasmine sort of scent, and he wonders if Ryan can smell it to.

Next to him in the bed, Ryan is tossing and turning like he can’t get comfortable.

Shane’s willing to ignore that, but then he hears a small stifled noise, like a whimper, like a sob half swallowed into a pillow. He knows it’s not Anne.

“Hey, man. Hey. Seriously, what’s…?”

He flips over, reaches out a hand in the dark to where he knows Ryan must be, and connects with surprisingly muscled bicep. _What a weird thing to think_. Ryan jumps under his touch.

“Something is seriously wrong with this place,” Ryan says. He sounds—like Ryan, but not. His voice is low and scratchy. Something like arousal twists in Shane’s gut, which he acknowledges is not the appropriate reaction when your friend is crying next to you on a massive four-poster monstrosity in an allegedly-haunted bedroom which you are both sleeping in for work. _For work_ , _Madej_ , he tells himself sternly.

“Can you be more…specific?” Shane asks tentatively, for the second time today.

Ryan scrambles out of bed again. Shane thinks he’s said something wrong, done something wrong, but then he realizes Ryan is just turning the camera off again.

Ryan perches on the edge of the bed, an indistinct shape that Shane can only just make out in the dark, so he turns the lamp back on. He wants to see Ryan’s face, wants to know that he is alright. Ryan’s cheeks are damp, his hands fisted in the flowered duvet.

“It won’t go away,” Ryan says miserably. “I’ve been like this since we got here, basically, and it won’t fucking—”

“Ah,” Shane says. “Well, you know, sometimes fear…adrenaline…they can affect people. Physically.” He waves his hands indistinctly crotchward. “It’s a, a scientifically known phenomenon.” Shane feels a little better staying in the realm of scientifically known phenomena. _Good job, Madej. Sneaking in there with logic at the buzzer. Just your average, run-of-the-mill fear boner, okay, let’s all get some shut eye!_

“I’m not scared,” Ryan says, which is frankly the most shocking thing Shane has seen or heard all night, because Ryan is always scared. “Except for the fact that something about this place makes me desperate to fuck, it’s not scary at all. I just don’t know what to do.”

It takes Shane a solid minute to react because the phrase _desperate to fuck_ is rebounding around his brain, snaking down his spine, hitting him directly in the dick. He goes from half-mast to fully hard so quickly that it almost makes him feel ill. He wants to scuttle away from Ryan, put as much distance between them as he can. He wants to reach out and touch. He wants to—

He does reach out, in the end, but just to deliver a firm pat to Ryan’s shoulder in a way that he hopes is reassuring.  That’s weird, too; they don’t touch much, normally. Ryan is not a tactile person, at least not with Shane.

“Why don’t you just go to the bathroom and…take care of it?” He asks.

“I did!” Ryan says, loudly enough that they both jump, momentarily too full of feelings to be embarrassed. “Of course I did, earlier. When I changed.  I’m not stupid, I know how to—”

“Oh,” Shane says lamely. “And it’s still—”

“Yes. I did—twice, Shane. Two times.”

“You were only in there five minutes!”

Ryan shrugs.  “Yeah, well, I told you this wasn’t normal, dude! It’s this fucking place. It’s like my dick is”—he lowers his voice again, like the nonexistent ghosts might hear— “ _possessed_.”

Shane falls over on the bed, wheezing with laughter. He feels terrible for laughing, he does. It’s not funny, really. Ryan is demonstrably miserable, his own body is betraying him with its interest, it’s all a fucking mess. _My job is so weird_ , he thinks fervently, before righting himself again and pulling his face into what he very much hopes is a supportive expression.

“Your dick isn’t possessed,” Shane says.

“What’s wrong with me? Why is it only me? Did somebody slip me something? You’re fucking—fine! Normal!   _Your_ dick isn’t trying to sabotage your professional and personal life in one fell swoop,” Ryan says. It comes out kind of strangled.

Shane shifts uncomfortably, wanting very much to adjust himself in his sweats, to touch himself, but not wanting to fucking encourage it either.

“Not. Not _completely_ fine, as such.  Christ, two times, really?”

Shane can tell Ryan’s realized the extent of their mutual situation when Ryan buries his face in the crook of his own arm, the back of his neck flushing, if possible, even redder. Breathing very quickly, Ryan rests his hand in his own lap. He grinds down on the bulge in his sweatpants with the heel of his hand, hard, hard enough to hurt, probably.

As Shane watches, fascinated, Ryan grips his dick through the material and tugs once, gently, sighing in relief. Shane knows he should look away, but it’s like a train wreck. A stupid, sexy train wreck. His whole field of vision has narrowed to Ryan’s hand palming his dick through his sweats.

“Jesus,” Shane says. “Jesus, Ry. You really can’t—you’re.”

“I told you,” Ryan says through gritted teeth, stroking himself again—but like he has to, not like he _wants_ to. “I can’t help it. This is so fucking—humiliating, and—”

“Okay,” Shane says, making a decision, because somebody fucking has to. “Okay. This is stupid.”

He puts out a hand, _which is definitely not shaking with nerves,_ _thanks_ , _because he’s a grown-ass man,_ and reaches for Ryan.

*

Shane’s never been with a guy before, has never held a dick in his hand other than his own, but he does know the theory, at least. He’s committed to the thing now, and he’s going to fucking do it right. He’s going to solve this problem, he and Ryan are going to go to sleep, they’re going to wake up uncomfortable and get the fuck out of dodge and never speak of this again. He’s a sensible man, and it’s a sensible plan.

Unfortunately sensible goes out the window the second, the absolute _second_ , Shane’s hand lands in Ryan’s lap. His hand is big, bigger than Ryan’s, and he carefully knocks Ryan’s own hand aside, covers Ryan’s dick through his sweatpants, and squeezes. Ryan moans, which sounds frankly pornographic, and suddenly Shane is struggling to think clearly. He worries this will interfere with the execution of his sensible plan.

“Is this—is this what you need?” Shane asks. He’s not sure Ryan’s in his right mind, not completely sure it even counts as consent if he or Ryan or both of them are under the influence of some kind of, God, _sex curse,_ but he has to ask.

Ryan nods. His hips buck up into Shane’s hand.  
  
“I need you to say it,” Shane murmurs, his hand sliding up Ryan’s dick and towards the drawstring of his sweatpants. Both because he needs to hear Ryan give permission, and because he _wants_ to. Because he thinks it will be unbelievably hot, and he wants to hear Ryan say the words.

“Oh my god, you’re fucking impossible,” Ryan groans. “Yes. Please. Shane Madej, _please_ touch my dick before I fucking die and haunt you forever, which will be hard for you to explain to people for a number of reasons.”

Shane laughs into Ryan’s neck, where he’s contemplating kissing or licking or sucking some kind of complicated design in the very spot under Ryan’s jawline that caught his attention earlier. He’s not sure whether that would cross a line somehow, but his own dick is pressing insistently against the inseam of his sweats and as he lets himself roll his hips into Ryan’s leg he decides it’s probably fine.

He opens his mouth on Ryan’s neck and sucks lightly as his fingers untie Ryan’s sweats and he sticks his hand in. Shane mouths his way along Ryan’s jaw as his right hand curls around Ryan’s cock.

The angle is awkward, and the pants situation is an undeniable issue that will have to be resolved, but Shane discovers with satisfaction that this is a thing he’s not half bad at. He grasps Ryan’s dick and pulls with the speed and pressure he likes for himself, and Ryan rewards his efforts with another groan right into Shane’s ear.

Shane pulls away a bit, hand still working, and looks down at his hand on Ryan.  Ryan’s dick is, is—quite nice, really, not that he has much to compare it to, flushed and thick and hard. “You are really fucking hard right now,” he says, because evidently his brain-to-mouth filter is just gone now. “Is this what you’re usually working with? Impressive if yes.”

“Shut up, Shane. It’s—it’s not you, it’s the, ah, ah—the fucking—haunted sex hotel.”

Ryan shucks his sweats off. Shane feels a little weirder about rubbing against his friend’s leg now that it’s bare, but not enough to stop doing it. The animal part of his brain has wrested control from the logic part, and now it’s just— _more pressure—more friction—need more, more of everything_.

Shane pulls his hand off Ryan, and Ryan makes a frustrated noise and juts his hips up as if he would follow, but Shane pauses only to lick his hand and returns it to Ryan’s dick. It’s better, so much better, with the wetness, and Shane revels in the slick slide and the noise Ryan makes as he lets his pointer and middle fingers wrap around the head of Ryan’s dick and rub against the sensitive spot just underneath.  

“I mean, it’s not _not_ me,” Shane points out, he thinks fairly. He twists his wrist, like he’s had girls do to him before with good results, to drive the point home.

“Oh, shit, I’m—I’m gonna—”

“Yeah?”

Shane runs his thumb along Ryan’s slit, watching the way it makes Ryan gasp and jerk. He’ll probably never do this again, he wants to do it right—wants to remember—

“Yeah, Jesus, please, please don’t stop—”

“I’m not gonna stop.”

Shane picks up the rhythm, the pressure, gives Ryan just a little more of everything, matches the _more—more—more_ chanting in his head. With no more preamble, Ryan comes all over Shane’s hand and his own stomach. _Yes_ , Shane’s lizard brain thinks, and then he’s rubbing against Ryan and coming too, in his sweatpants and almost untouched, harder than he’s come in years.

*

Ryan ducks into the bathroom to clean up, and then Shane follows. He grimly unsticks his sweatpants from his body, considers trying to clean them in the sink, reconsiders and resolves to just stick them in a side pocket of his suitcase and hope they wash clean at home. He changes into a spare pair of boxers and tries to ignore the way his body is still thrumming. Hot, he shucks off his t-shirt, deciding that after everything that’s happened tonight he can probably get away with sleeping shirtless.

When he emerges from the bathroom, Ryan is curled up on the bed facing away from him, completely naked. Shane lets himself feel a pang of—something.

“Weird that they don’t put _that_ on the website!” Shane jokes. He’s not sure what to do now, what a straight guy’s supposed to say after he gets his friend off, comes on his leg like a goddamn teenager, and neither of them are sure if it’s because they wanted to or because a sex ghost made them do it.

Ryan doesn’t laugh, and Shane’s stomach drops. If he’s fucked this up, he’ll never forgive himself.

“Ryan, are you cool?”

“No, I’m not cool.” Ryan’s voice is strangled. “I’m fucked.  Shane, I’m so fucked.”

He rolls over, evidently beyond embarrassment or modesty now, and Shane sees that he’s still hard—or, possibly, hard again.

Shane allows himself look for a long moment.

“Holy shit, man. Are you in, uh, pain?”

“I’m not comfortable, but it’s not like a physical pain. It’s just, like, a need. Clawing its way out. I come and it goes away for a couple of minutes, and then it builds and builds until I, until I have to—”

He looks helplessly at Shane. “Until I sexually assault my friend in the fucking workplace, I guess.” He winces.

“You didn’t. Sexually assault me. I was, it was good. Don’t worry about me. What do you need? Should we leave? Do you need a doctor?”

“Jesus, no doctor. We could maybe leave, but.”

Shane isn’t great with the talking stuff, so he just waits Ryan out, lets him think it through.

“I’m scared that if we leave it’ll follow me home and I’ll just be like this forever.”

“I do just have to say for the record, because it’s my role in this whole,” he gestures around the room, “ _thing_ , that I really don’t think your dick is possessed,” Shane says, as lightly as he can manage. Even to his own ears it rings hollow, because clearly something is wrong. He doesn’t blame Ryan for being terrified, for feeling betrayed by his own body.

“So…what do we do, then? What do you need?”

Ryan rolls over, onto his stomach, and mumbles into the pillow.

“Sorry, didn’t catch that.”

Ryan turns his head to the side, but he won’t look at Shane. His ears are pink, and his back is distractingly muscled.

“I said I need to get fucked.”

It’s not often that Shane finds himself genuinely speechless, but in this moment, he can’t think of a single thing to say that would contribute helpfully to this conversation. When he doesn’t say anything, Ryan goes on.

“I’ve read a little bit about, uh, sex magic. Rituals. Stuff like that. If that’s what’s happening here, and I don’t have any other explanation but for once I’m all ears if you do, I think maybe this is one of those things where, like, the cure for the thing _is_ the thing.”

Shane hates that he has to entertain talk about sex magic and sex rituals, hates that it’s _Ryan Bergara’s fucking unflagging_ _boner_ of all things in the world that’s forcing him to reconsider his worldview. But he knows he hasn’t been himself in this place, and he’s seen evidence that Ryan’s not himself, and frankly he’s just out of other ideas. And that thrum in his ribcage is back.

“We did kind of do that already, though.”                  

“I think maybe the rules for this sort of thing are a little more archaic. You know, traditional.” Ryan rolls back over, lifts his hands, forms one into a circle and crudely penetrates the circle with the pointer finger of his other hand in the universal gesture for banging. Despite himself, Shane laughs.

“I’m not sure I’m going to fit the bill if what it wants is traditional,” Shane points out. “Do we need to find a woman? Should we…hire someone?”

He tries to mentally prepare himself to get to a place where he can type “how to hire a hooker savannah georgia” into Google and live with himself, after.

“I considered that,” Ryan says, “but our phones don’t get service in here, remember? Also, if Buzzfeed found out we’d both get fired. So, if you’re willing. If you will, if you _can_ , I think. I think it has to be you? But if you can’t, you need to leave, because I think eventually I won’t be able to stop myself.”

*

Now it’s Shane’s turn to sit on the edge of the bed, head almost between his knees, doing his very best to breathe in and out. Ryan is making supportive noises, but he’s still naked and his dick is still so, _so_ hard and it’s distracting rather than helpful.

 _You’re in it now, Madej_ , he thinks. Exactly one half of him is terrified and wants to bail out of the room and out of this inn, leave Ryan on the bed, order a Lyft and go straight to the airport and home to Illinois, never to see anybody from Buzzfeed ever again. He wants to leave a giant Shane-shaped hole in that door and just Roadrunner the fuck out. The other half of him is so turned on he can’t _breathe_.

He wishes that at some point in his nearly thirty-two years of life he’d learned how to meditate.

He’s dimly aware of a weird rhythmic noise, and when he looks over at Ryan, Ryan is jerking off. He looks so fucking spectacular, hand wrapped around his dick, body flushed, that Shane has to look away again.

“I can’t make an informed decision when you’re doing that,” Shane tells him. He’s still not sure how much of the want pooling in his stomach is him, and how much is this place, this whatever-it-is. It’s not something he’s ever wanted before, but it feels real.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I can’t help it, I can’t not—” Ryan says. “I can go in the bathroom, but I can’t stop.” He looks miserable. He looks scared out of his fucking mind.

Shane realizes that this may be difficult for him, but it’s a nightmare for Ryan. He can’t imagine what it would feel like to completely lose control like that, over your own body, over your own mind. He can’t imagine being the one lying down on the bed, pinned there by base instinct, forced to ask your coworker, your friend, to do you a solid and fuck you so you don’t—he doesn’t know what. He’s afraid of will happen to Ryan if he says no, but he doesn’t know what will happen to _him and Ryan_ , to their lives, to Unsolved, if he says yes.

He weighs all those things in the balance, lets his dick put in its two cents, and then he makes up his mind.

“Yeah. Yes. Okay.”

Ryan breathes out explosively, relieved.

“Can I kiss you?” Shane asks, because he needs to do that. He needs to do that, first, before they do anything else. Everything is new here, and he is overwhelmed by it. He wants to be grounded by something he knows—and he doesn’t really know kissing a man, kissing _Ryan_ , but it’s probably as close as he’s going to get to familiar territory.

“Of course,” Ryan says. “You had your hand on my dick not ten minutes ago, of course you can kiss me.”

Shane flops over him on the bed, a little bit dramatically, because this does feel like an appropriate time for dramatics. “You’re a real smooth talker, Bergara. I bet you say that to all the girls.”

“Have you thought about this before?” Ryan asks, in a way that doesn’t betray whether he means _Can you do this?_ or _I have_.

“What, kissing you? Giving you an unskilled handjob on a hideous duvet? Fucking you? Honestly, no to all three.” Shane isn’t sure whether that’s the answer Ryan expects, or wants, but it is the truth—he’d never once thought of Ryan this way, before. He’s pretty sure he’ll never be able to _not_ think of Ryan this way, after. Shane’s probably going to think about Ryan’s throat and back and biceps and dick every day for the rest of his fucking life, but he doesn’t say that.

Instead Shane leans over Ryan, grabs his chin gently, and guides their mouths together for the first time. It’s a soft kiss, a polite kiss, and he hopes it conveys things he doesn’t have words for yet. Ryan’s lips are a little chapped, a little bitten, maybe from the stress he’s been under today. Shane wonders whether, if he’d noticed something was wrong right away with this place, he’d have been able to get them out of this before it was too far gone. It’s certainly too far gone now.

He lets Ryan take the lead, deepening the kiss when he’s ready, and he does. Mouths open, slide hotly against each other, and Shane lets his tongue slip against Ryan’s. Ryan makes a gratifying sort of noise deep in his throat and wraps his hand around the back of Shane’s neck, pulling him in. Shane’s pleased to find that he was right—it’s no different than kissing a woman, really, just a little scratchier where Ryan’s day-old stubble rubs at his skin. This is something he can be good at, effortlessly and without worry, and he lets himself have it.  

Ryan tugs at Shane, one hand still on his neck, one at his shoulder, and Shane follows, clambering awkwardly on top of Ryan. His limbs are everywhere—there’s just a lot of Shane—and he’s very aware that Ryan is naked and hard under him. He doesn’t want to be too tentative, he knows what Ryan needs, he knows what his own dick wants, so he lets his hips stutter down, pressing them together. He thinks he probably can’t go wrong with that. 

“ _Fuck_ ,” Ryan says, pulling out of the kiss. “Fucking—shit. Shane.”

“Is that good?” Shane asks.

“Yes, it’s good. You’re just flailing around and it all works and it’s pissing me off.”

“What should I do?”

Ryan looks up at him and shrugs with all the range of motion his current position pinned under Shane allows. His eyes are unfocused, which makes Shane nervous, so he pulls back a little, putting space between their dicks so he can fucking think for a second. He doesn’t know what he’s doing, but he knows enough to know what he doesn’t know. Just enough to be dangerous. He knows they need—stuff. He knows Ryan has to be ready. And he knows that they don’t have a lot of time, that Ryan is going to get more and more desperate until he can’t control himself at all, and that’s when he might really get hurt.

There will be time in the morning, or in the days after, for embarrassment and awkwardness and God knows what else. But there probably isn’t a lot of time now.

“Alright,” he says, sitting upright and slapping Ryan on the leg. “Let’s get some dick into you before the sex curse claims another victim.”

“Another victim? Who was the first?”  
  
“Fuck if I know. Anne, probably. I bet that’s why she starts fucking crying whenever a couple tries to have nice normal sex in here.”

Ryan laughs, but he’s also doing his very best to hump up into Shane, to get friction to his dick. Shane reaches down, gets a hand on Ryan, wraps long fingers around him.

“Okay, hey, listen to me. Are you listening?” Shane strokes once, twice.

“You have my full attention, Shane, I promise you.”

“Have you ever—done this before?”

“Fucked a friend at work? No, can’t say I have.”

“Butt stuff, asshole. I’m trying to tell you I don’t know what I’m doing, which is exactly what a person who’s about to get fucked wants to hear, probably.”

“Not, like, with a guy. But—on my own, sometimes, and. And with girls, if they were into that.”

“Yeah?” Shane’s curious, and also _Jesus fuck that is hot_. He imagines Ryan spread eagle on his bed in his apartment back home in LA, opening himself up with his fingers. Pushing back against a pretty girl wearing a strap-on. Shane’s not a rube, he’s seen enough porn to imagine it, and imagine it he does.

“Yeah. Um. Fingers, and, and toys and stuff.” Shane thought they were well past the modest blushing portion of the evening, but Ryan’s face is bright red and glowing, one of his secrets laid bare.

“That’s really hot,” Shane says, in the interest of honesty, rewarding Ryan for his own honesty with one of those tricky twists of his wrist he tried earlier. “And a relief, because that means one of us kind of knows what to do. I’m sorry to be all business here, but we have to get this done now while you’re still coherent enough to talk me through it.”

“We need stuff,” Ryan says. “Lube.”

“Do you have lube?”

“Yeah, Shane, I pack lube every time I go on an Unsolved shoot, just in case I trip and fall on some ghost’s dick. No, I don’t have lube!”

Shane thinks, and then hops off Ryan and goes into the bathroom. He comes back out with two small tubes of hand lotion.

“Will this work?”

“Yeah, it’s not ideal, but it’ll—it’ll be fine. Gotta say, of all the places we’ve visited, I can’t believe this is going down at a place where they put out complimentary Aveda products for the guests.”

“Yeah, not really on-brand, is it? Do you have a condom? Because that’s one thing the inn definitely does not provide.”

“There’s one in my wallet. But—Shane—” Ryan pulls a face. “I don’t think we should use one if you’re, if you’re clean. If it is a ritual, the uh, the bodily fluids might be part of it.”

The idea of fucking without a condom is completely foreign to Shane. He’s so careful about it, so vigilant. He’s never had a long-term girlfriend who was on the pill, and so he’s literally never had sex without one. He feels unmoored from his life again. _This is not who you are, this is not what you do, you are in over your head_. But what if they do go through all this, they do it wrong, and it doesn’t work? He can’t live with that.

“Yeah, I’m clean,” Shane says, “but for the record I don’t think people who say ‘bodily fluids’ deserve to have me come inside them. I’m bending the rules for you just this once because you’re my friend and I don’t want you to rub your dick off.”

“That’s fair,” Ryan agrees, rolling his hips with grim determination against the bed.

*

“So how do we do this?” Shane asks, eyeing the tubes of lotion.

“I can do this part myself,” Ryan says. “I can go in the bathroom if you don’t want to watch.”

Of course Shane wants to watch. Shane wants to _do_. He wants to be the one to open Ryan up, to stretch him open, to make him ready. He wants to make sure the thing is done properly, and he can’t trust that Ryan won’t rush in his haste. And most of all, he wants to try to make it good for Ryan, as good as it can be under the circumstances. He wants to give Ryan memories of Shane’s body and hands that aren’t tinged with fear and urgency, if he can. A shred of normalcy in a very not-normal situation.

He doesn’t know how to say these things, so he just says, “No, I will. I want to,” he clarifies.

“Okay,” Ryan agrees. He’s shivering. Shane doesn’t know if he’s freaked out, or if it’s just the—magic, or whatever—working on him, pulling strange physical reactions from his body. “I think it’s easiest if I’m on my hands and knees.”

He turns over, and Shane feels free to stare at the acres of bare shoulders and skin and ass and leg. He’s not used to wanting this yet, and he’s not sure if it’s something he’ll want tomorrow, but he is hard as rock and he knows it’s something he wants right now. That’s good enough.

Shane pulls off his boxers, palms at his dick. He’s going on thirty-two years old in a couple of months, so two erections in under half an hour is notable. _Sex magic_ , he thinks. Or maybe just the raw desire of something brand new, someone brand new.

He runs his hands over Ryan’s ass, spreads him a little. He wishes he’d done this with a woman, before, so he’d know what he was doing now. He knows that men are anatomically different than women back there and he wishes he knew more about that too.

“Use a lot of lotion,” Ryan directs. “On me, and on your fingers. Start with one, and you’ll know when you can add another.”

“I appreciate your faith in my instincts,” Shane says lightly. He carefully applies a generous dollop of lotion on Ryan’s hole.

“They’ve been pretty good instincts so far. Augh! Cold!”

“Sorry, bro,” Shane says, because it feels like what you say. He spreads the lotion a bit with his finger, cautiously at first, and then massages a little more boldly. He knows this is a muscle, and like other muscles it has to be worked, has to be warmed up to make it do what you need it to do.

With care, Shane eases the pad of his finger into Ryan. Pulling back every once in a while to add a little more lotion—but eyeing their not-exactly-plentiful stock, wanting to make sure they have enough—he works a full finger in, going as slow as he can get away with. Ryan’s impatient beneath him, wriggling around.

“Fuck, Shane, your fucking finger. Fuck. More, please, please, I need—”

“Bossy,” Shane says, twisting his finger. “Do you—actually like this?”

“Yes, Shane, I fucking like it.”

“Is that just the sex curse talking?” Shane asks. He shouldn’t ask that. He knows he probably won’t like the answer. But he has to ask.

“I don’t know,” Ryan admits, which is a scary thing to admit. “Maybe.”

Ryan’s right. Shane can tell when it’s time to add a second finger, and he does so, very slowly working them in, stretching Ryan open. It’s good that Shane’s able to tell, because it’s not long before Ryan is no help at all. Words turn to moans, and moans turn to incoherent babbling.

“Do your frat bros know you get like this?” Shane asks. He isn’t meaning to talk dirty, but Ryan moans a string of curses into the pillow and Shane files that one away for later. Just, like, in case. “Dorm walls are thin. Do you think they ever heard you, alone in your room, fucking yourself on your own fingers?”

Maybe he means to, a little.

It’s not at all like fingering a woman, really, but the essentials are the same. Shane knows he has the hands for this, strong, slim-knuckled, with long, careful fingers. He must do something different with his fingers, crook them just so, because Ryan’s back stiffens and he actually _screams_. Quietly, hoarsely, but still. _Prostate_ , Shane thinks.

He tries to remember every filthy thing he’s heard Curly saying in the kitchen back at the office. He thinks back to every sex-related video he’s ever produced for Buzzfeed, every questionable porn he’s watched while drunk. He does that thing with his fingers again, and again, and Ryan is _coming_ under Shane, into his own hand, all over the sheets.

*

After Ryan comes he’s able to focus again, be present, which Shane is grateful for.

“I don’t think I need three,” Ryan says, and it’s true that he seems very relaxed under Shane’s fingers, responsive and open. “I think you can fuck me now, if you’re ready. But if you need more time that’s cool too.”

“No, I’m ready,” Shane says. His mouth is dry, his dick is throbbing. It had been all he could do to not come when Ryan had, the last time. He’s so fucking ready. “Can you turn over? I want to—”

_I want to look at you when you come, if it’s the last time. I want to look at your face now in case you don’t want to look at me tomorrow._

He does not say that.

Ryan turns over, languid and compliant. Shane leans down to kiss him, hisses with pleasure when Ryan’s hand finds his dick. He realizes with a shock that, for all the touching Shane has done, this is the first time Ryan has touched him tonight, directly and with intent. He doesn’t think it’s a slight—Ryan’s preoccupation with his own dick has been all-consuming, hasn’t given him the mental space to think about anything else.

 It strikes Shane anew that this thing they’re doing is an antidote to a poison, a fucked-up twisting of real, loving, consensual sex, and he wishes it was different. Despite that, he finds himself inching perilously close to coming, and he has to reach down and grab Ryan’s wrist.

“Okay,” Shane says, shakily. “I’m just gonna—”

He collects Ryan under him with a little light manhandling. There’s more of him than any woman he’s ever been with, but not much more, although he’s muscular—and Shane wonders how strange this must be for Ryan, how unfamiliar. As if Ryan’s reading his mind, he shakes his head.

“This is weird, man. There is so much of you. You are just so fucking tall, what do girls even do with you?”

Shane laughs. “They manage. You’re managing.”

“That’s generous, dude. I’m not sure trying to climb you like a tree is ‘managing.’”

Shane eases two fingers back into Ryan, carefully, just making sure he’s really ready. This is the point where he’d be slipping a condom on, usually, and it feels so strange not to do that. Shane misses the ritual of it, and the security, but he’s also aware that this will be the closest he’s ever been to another person. That thought sends a jolt through him, down to his toes, and when he rubs lotion on himself he has to be quick and businesslike.

“Okay,” Shane says again, and guides himself into Ryan. He doesn’t know where to look. Eye contact feels too intimate somehow. He settles for leaning down over him, burying his head into the space between Ryan’s neck and his shoulder. A place for biting and whispering.

“Fuck,” Ryan whispers as Shane breaches him. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, your dick, goddamn.”

“I bet you definitely say that to all the girls,” Shane says again, a reflex of a joke.

“Shut up, Shane,” Ryan gasps, pushing back on Shane, pushing him further in, opening around him. “You’re such an asshole.”

This time it’s Shane who can’t find words. It would be easier for them to banter their way through this, maybe—talk like Shane isn’t inside Ryan right now, can’t feel him everywhere, get it done and move on with their lives. But everything Shane wants to say is dirty, and he’s been fighting a lot of instincts tonight in the name of logic and care and he’s tired of doing it. He wants to stop thinking, finally, and just _fuck_. Like it’s normal, like he has Ryan in his bed for real.

“God, Ryan,” he says, right into Ryan’s ear, sliding out partway and then angling his hips to drive back into him. “You feel fucking—amazing—tight and—I fucking love it. We should have done this shit sooner.  I could have had you like this a year ago, two years.”

Ryan’s arms wrap around him, grab at his back, at his ass. Pull him in deeper.

“Jesus, you’re taking me so fucking well. I know this is a lot, this whole night has been—a lot—too much—but you’re so good, you’re doing great.”

It’s not him, usually, this praise stuff, but Shane knows Ryan could very well come out of this night with a lot of regrets.  He wants there to be no doubt how he was feeling right this moment, right when it mattered most. He doesn’t want to say _I love you_ , doesn’t want to tarnish those words with this thing they have to do now, but he wants Ryan to feel it all the same.

Shane bites at the spot where Ryan’s neck meets shoulder, not hard enough to hurt him, but hard enough to leave a mark. He doesn’t stop to think about who will see it, what they’ll say. He doesn’t think at all. He just leans in, and then pulls back to kiss the spot gently.

“Ry, Ry,” he says urgently in Ryan’s ear, “I’m—close. I’m so close. Do you have to come again, before?” They haven’t talked much at all about the logistics of this, about whether there are things that need to happen in certain ways to satisfy whatever this is. Probably Ryan just doesn’t know.

Shane slows the rhythm of his hips to almost nothing, shoulders shaking with the effort of not letting himself come.  He pulls back enough to see Ryan’s face; he has to know that he’s doing this right. It has to work.

Ryan shakes his head. “I don’t know. I don’t think there’s a playbook for this. I think you can come.” He rolls his hips up slowly, testing. “I want you to come.”

After Ryan says it they don’t have a choice, because that’s what’s going to happen.

“Fuck!” Shane says, just one more time, explosively. He lets his hips rock again, fucks all the way into Ryan, presses a kiss to the base of Ryan’s neck just above the bruise that he’s sucked there, and comes.

He lays on top of Ryan for a moment, gets his breath back, lets himself have this minute. Then he pulls back to sit up on his knees, careful not to pull out, and spits on his hand. He looks down at Ryan, laid out under him, full in the face.

“I’m just gonna,” he says, and Ryan nods.

“Please.”

“So polite,” Shane says, getting his hand around Ryan’s dick again. It takes no time at all—four pulls, five, Shane’s getting kind of good at this—and Ryan’s coming all over again, which should be fucking physically impossible, but here they are.  For the first time tonight, Shane gets a good look at Ryan’s face as he comes, watches the anxiety fall away and his mouth fall open, watches the muscles in his abdomen tense and release. He can feel Ryan coming around his cock and it’s almost too much, he’s so sensitive from his own orgasm.

For the first time since they stepped in this place, Shane feels _satisfied_. Sated. He wants to lick the come from Ryan’s stomach and his own hand. He wants to fall asleep right there, sticky and sweaty, tucked together like real lovers.

Instead he pulls out gently, before Ryan has even opened his eyes, and flees to the bathroom.

*

Shane showers quickly. He’d been right, the shower pressure is amazing. He scrubs with a washcloth at the come on his belly, on his hands. As he towels off, he feels a lurch of nerves. Out there in the bedroom, Ryan is either cured or he’s in pieces, and Shane’s afraid to open the door and find out which.  He looks at himself in the mirror—eyes too wide, hair sticking up in every direction—and for the first time in over two decades he puts his head down and says a quick prayer.

_Please, God, let him be okay. Let this be okay. Uh, amen, I guess._

He gathers himself, wraps the towel around his waist, and goes back out to the bedroom.

Ryan is asleep already, sprawled out in the exact middle of the bed like a cat. He’s no longer hard, and Shane lets out whoosh of air he didn’t know he was holding. Ryan is breathing in and out, rhythmically, peacefully, which means he hasn’t been, Shane doesn’t know, _fucked to death_ —something he hadn’t even realized he was worried about. Shane’s head spins with relief. He wants to crawl into bed with Ryan, wrap arms and legs around him, but he doesn’t think he’s allowed to do that.

The sensible part of Shane, returning at last, knows that Ryan will really regret it in the morning if he doesn’t shower now. He also registers that the camera’s been off for over an hour now, a gap in the footage that can be explained away pretty easily, but they will need some overnight footage or the crew will be suspicious

Shane nudges at Ryan’s shoulder gently, and then, when he still doesn’t wake, a little harder.

“I’m sorry, man, you can’t sleep yet.”

Ryan mumbles and tosses an arm out wildly, hitting Shane in the face.

“Motherfuck, ow!” Shane exclaims, and Ryan sits bolt upright.

“Are you okay? What’s going on?”

“Nothing. Hey, I think we’re fine.” Shane gestures down at their bodies. “Your _problem_ ”—he doesn’t want to say _erection_ , which is weird because he was perfectly content to put his hands all over it not ten minutes ago— “appears to be resolved.  So, uh, go team.”

Ryan’s smile, when it comes slowly from sleep, is blinding and beautiful. He makes a move toward Shane, to hug him, to kiss him, Shane doesn’t know. He doesn’t find out, because Ryan stops himself. Instead he holds up his fist to bump against Shane’s. It’s such an absurd post-coital maneuver that Shane catalogues it for later, wishes he could tell somebody about it—but he has nobody he can tell. _Maybe it’s not even that weird_ , he thinks. _Maybe dudes fist-bump all the time after fucking_.

“I’m sorry to wake you,” Shane says, “but I figured you’d rather not wait to shower. And we, uh, we need to turn the camera back on, if you’re okay with that.”

‘Yeah, we should. TJ will fucking kill us if we don’t get any footage from tonight, and then what was even the point?”

Ryan stands up, cracking his neck, testing all his limbs. Shane makes himself look away, to give Ryan privacy as he picks his way gingerly to the bathroom.

He’s in there a while, long enough for Shane to get concerned. He imagines Ryan standing under the water until it gets cold, freaking out. Or worse, maybe he’s hurt, or—Shane doesn’t really know what comes after. He reminds himself that Ryan knows what he’s doing, sort of.

Finally Ryan emerges, clad again in his sweats but sans shirt, toweling off his hair. The camera’s got night vision on and shouldn’t pick up the fact that both of their hair is wet, but he’s probably right not to chance it.

“You good?” Shane asks, in lieu of the more delicate and personal questions that he’s in fact deeply curious about.

“Yeah.” Ryan pulls a face. “Clean-up was just a little more than I’m used to.  Shit, this bed, man.”

“Yeah, not great,” Shane says. “They’re going to have to burn the duvet, which honestly should be considered a service we’ve performed for the city of Savannah. They’re going to think we’re the biggest assholes, though.”

“Entitled Hollywood types,” Ryan says, “swooping in here with our cameras, making a mockery of their local history, getting jizz on everything.” 

Shane laughs, glad that things aren’t so dire that they can’t joke about it. As long as they can still joke—can be _them_ —it’ll be fine.

“I’m going to turn the camera on now,” Ryan says. “But I’m going to leave the mic volume really low, so we can still, like, talk if we need to.”

“We can talk tomorrow,” Shane says, curling down into the bed, avoiding the wet patch in the middle with a grimace. “Can we just sleep now?”

They sleep. Blissfully, Shane doesn’t dream, or if he does he doesn’t remember.

*

When Shane wakes up, before he opens his eyes, he runs through his whole body, checking for errors in the code. Arms, check. Legs, check. Head, pounding a little, but not the worst. Check. Dick, mercifully soft, check. Physically, at least, he is unchanged.

He does open his eyes, then, and the first thing he sees is Ryan still asleep across the wide expanse of bed. Ryan looks like a fucking wreck. Dark circles under his eyes, shadows of fingertip-shaped bruises on his ribs. There are two extremely obvious marks on his neck, purple-wine-red and stark, that Shane doesn’t think can be confused for anything but what they are.

Shane wonders if they’re visible on camera. He wonders if they can convince viewers a ghost did it.

He checks his phone—almost 7:30, and the crew will be there by 8, 8:15. He texts TJ: _Ryans still asleep, bring coffee when u come?_ And TJ texts back _no prob_ almost immediately, so evidently they’re getting service in here now.

Shane lies back down on his side, facing Ryan, pretending to be checking his phone. Really he’s continuing his inventory, testing the inner parts of himself for wounds, pressing down blindly inside himself for internal bruises that might match Ryan’s outer ones to see if they ache in the light of day. He feels tender all over.

Because Ryan is sleeping, Shane lets himself look. He looks at Ryan’s hipbones, his forearms, his shoulders, those _fucking_ hickeys.

“Take a picture, it’ll last longer,” Ryan mumbles, eyes still closed. Shane feels his cheeks heat up a little, embarrassed at being caught staring.

There’s something curling in Shane’s stomach that isn’t desire—he might not feel want for a long time, maybe, after this—but is _something_. And he’s not repelled, remembering the things they did, the things he said, which seems like a good start. Last night he’d been so afraid that he would wake up thinking _that wasn’t me, I would never._ Only now does the possibility occur to him that maybe it was _extra-him_ , inhibitions down, able to want things he had never bothered to consider before.

“At the risk of sounding ungentlemanly, you’re a mess, Bergara,” Shane says, very quietly, because the camera’s still rolling. “The guys will be here in probably half an hour and we’ve got to pack up and figure out what to do about those bad boys.” He doesn’t point, because of the camera, but Ryan’s fingers come up to brush against the mark at the base of his own neck all the same.

Shane hops up to turn off the camera, and Ryan goes into the bathroom. The toilet flushes, the sink runs, and then Ryan comes out again dressed in jeans and a t-shirt. The shirt’s a crew neck and it hides nothing.

“Well, shit,” Shane says. “I have a cardigan that might help.”

“The arms of your cardigan would hang down to, like, my knees,” Ryan says, peering at himself in the little mirror. “Also we’ll be walking around outside today and it’s hot as shit. There’s a CVS a block away, I’m just going to run over and get some concealer and, and, some Tylenol.”

Shane wants to ask if Ryan is okay, but they’ve spent the last twelve hours trading _Are you okay_ s back and forth at each other and he’s not sure his mouth will physically form the words again. He can either ask the question he wants to ask ( _Hey, Ry, how’s the ol’ butthole this morning?_ ) or stay silent, and he opts for the latter.

Ryan goes to pick up what he needs, and Shane marvels at how easily he can just—leave. Last night it felt like they were trapped there, in that room, like leaving was impossible. Like leaving was just going to invite whatever it was to spill into their real lives. But in the light of day it feels silly.

When Ryan gets back a few minutes later, Shane is packing up the camera into its bag, making sure cords and cables are accounted for. Ryan uses the little mirror in the bedroom, by the door where the light’s better than it is in the bathroom, to carefully apply concealer to his neck.

“How does it look?” he asks, finally.

Shane comes over to see better, standing closer to Ryan than he’s been since last night. Ryan cranes his neck back, and Shane has to bend over awkwardly, and it’s all weird.

“It’s, hmm,” he says. “Probably fine?”

Really it looks like Ryan’s slapped some cheap concealer on hickeys. It doesn’t help that the shade isn’t quite right—it’s just a little light for Ryan’s skin tone.

“Give it here,” Shane says, trying to sound confident. “I put on so much concealer that week we did the video about dudes wearing makeup that I’m basically a professional now.”

Shane takes the tube from Ryan, paints a little bit on the back of his own hand. Picking up some product with the tip of his ring finger, he dabs as gently as he can at the mark under Ryan’s jaw. He thinks from the way his jaw is clenched that Ryan’s working very hard to not flinch away from his touch, an effort Shane appreciates. Eventually satisfied, he moves to the mark at the base of Ryan’s shoulder.

“My kingdom for a beauty blender!” he exclaims, to get Ryan to crack a smile. He thinks again, _I have the weirdest job._

When Shane’s finished, he hopes no one will be able to tell unless they’re looking very closely at Ryan’s neck. The illusion won’t be as good out in the bright natural sunlight, but at least it’s good enough that if the crew can tell, they’ll have the option of pretending they can’t.

TJ spends too much of his life staring at them through a camera lens to not notice. Sure enough, when the crew gets there TJ hands over the promised coffee to Shane and Ryan wordlessly. His eyes are appraising, but he won’t ask. He catches Shane’s eye, Shane shrugs one shoulder and makes a face that he hopes says _What can you do?_ and that’s that.

They go outside to film a few exterior shots it was too dark to get the night before, and by 9:00 am they’re returning the key to room 204 to one of the co-owners, a cheerful blonde woman of perhaps forty-five.

“I hope you enjoyed your time here with us in Savannah!” she chirps. “And I hope Anne didn’t keep you up!”

“Lotta great footage,” Ryan says, which is a lie. “Should be a great episode!” Lie.

“Thanks for letting us film,” Shane says, shaking her hand. He knows he’s emailed with her, but he’s forgotten her name and now it’s too late to ask. Sherry? Sheila? “We had a great time.” Lie, again. But also truth.

*

_Part 2._

To Shane’s enormous relief, things go back to normal when they get back to LA, almost. Shane, at least, operates under the assumption that if they just behave as if everything is simply, relentlessly normal, it will eventually become so. A sound “fake it ‘til you make it” strategy.

They eat lunch together, they joke together, they work together. Neither of them is particularly physically demonstrative by nature, so if they go out of their way to maintain physical distance it’s not so’s anybody would notice. Ryan wears a lot of high-necked shirts and jackets, and everything’s going to be just fine.

Ryan takes the footage from Georgia to do a first run-through. Usually this would be the editing team’s job, but he insists he doesn’t have much to do this week, that he wants to. Shane keeps his expression studiously neutral as he agrees. He wants to see the footage too—badly—but he knows Ryan gets first dibs.

On Friday night, Shane gets a text from Ryan.

_finished w footage, can i come over or r u busy_

_Yeah, no plans tonight. Pizza?_

_sounds good, ill bring beer_

_OK, see you soon._

Shane orders a couple of pizzas and then putters around his apartment, tidying just to keep himself busy. It’s not like he’s cleaning _for_ Ryan, who’s seen his place dozens of times and is himself one of the messiest people on God’s green earth. He’s just looking for something to do with his hands.

Ryan arrives balancing not one but two six-packs, laptop under his arm.

“Bonerwatch 2K18 was that bad, huh?” Shane asks.

“I don’t know how to talk about this sober,” Ryan says, “so I’ve decided we’re not going to. I had a shot at home and two beers in the Uber on the way over here, the driver thought I was an alcoholic, probably, and you better catch up.”

He does look just a little sloppy already, pink on his cheeks, eyes bright. Shane shrugs and reaches for a beer, which he pops open and chugs easily.

“Okay. What are we working with? Did you…see anything?”

Ryan opens his laptop, and then the editing software.

“I went through everything we had and pieced together what I think is an okay starter edit. I cut out anything compromising.”

“Compromising?”

“Just…like, awkward angles. Where _things_ are obvious.”

“Right, right. Maybe we should just lean into it. Give the fans a thrill.”

“Easy for you to say, it wasn’t your dick,” Ryan mutters, opening another beer.

“Fair enough.”

“I just need you to watch the footage a couple of times to make sure I’ve caught everything and there’s nothing, like, suspicious. If you think it’s fine I’ll send it along to the team and we can start doing VOs on Monday.”

Shane puts on his headphones, plugs them into Ryan’s laptop, and watches the whole cut. He watches it a second time. It feels weird to be eagle-eying Ryan’s crotch for signs of a visible erection while real, actual Ryan is sitting next to him watching in silence, but he accepts that this is just his life now.

He watches a third time.

“Well?” Ryan asks. He’s at least four beers deep now, and his face is pink all over. Shane’s not sure if it’s from the alcohol or if he’s embarrassed.

“Looks clean to me, nice work,” Shane says. “Gonna be a boring as fuck episode, though.” 

It’s true. Ryan managed to find a couple of EVPs that were stretches even for him, but that’s about it.

“I thought we could say that our camera mysteriously turned off and on overnight,” Ryan says. “Kill two birds with one stone, liven up the ep a little and explain away any gaps in footage.”

“Lie to our loyal viewership? Why, Ryan Bergara, I do declare!” Shane says, adopting a heavy Southern accent.

“Well, the camera did turn off and on, and ultimately the reasons were mysterious, so it’s not technically a lie. I think it’s our only option,” Ryan says.

“Fine by me. Pretty ironic, isn’t it? That the most eventful episode of this that we’ve literally ever filmed—and the most supernaturally eventful evening that anyone anywhere has ever had, possibly—is such a bust onscreen.”

Shane can tell the booze is doing its job, because when Ryan laughs it’s not even that stilted.

“ _Eventful_. Good euphemism, dude.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t know how to talk about this shit either. Dude.”

The pizza arrives, sparing them both from thinking of what to say next. Shane tips the delivery guy while Ryan dives headfirst into the box, emerging with slices of pizza in each hand.

*

They eat until they can’t eat any more, and drink both of the six-packs, and things feel as close to normal as they’ve felt since _before_.

Shane’s not drunk exactly, because there’s a lot of him and it takes more than beer, usually. But he’s feeling brave. He doesn’t want to ruin the easy atmosphere, but he also knows that if he doesn’t use the liquid courage now, they’ll probably never really talk about it and it’ll hang over their friendship forever.

“So, how are you feeling?” Shane asks. _How are you_ feeling _? Stupid fucking question, Madej, what the actual fuck is wrong with you?_

Ryan looks up from picking at the label of his empty beer bottle.

“Oh, are we doing this?”

“Yeah, I think we are. I don’t want it to be this thing we never talk about but that eats us from the inside out or something.”

“That’s a little dramatic.”

“Is it? It was a crazy thing that happened to us. That we did.”

Ryan’s quiet for a long minute, but not like he’s trying to avoid the conversation—like he’s trying to say something with care, to get it right even through his drunken haze.

“Honestly? I’m kind of wiggin’ out, dude.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. It’s not the supernatural stuff. The thing that gets me is, like, I don’t know what was real and what was not real. I felt— _things_ —and I don’t know if those _things_ are true or not.”

Shane thinks he knows exactly what Ryan means, but this is dangerous territory and he wouldn’t want to be wrong.

“Things, like?” 

“Things, like, _feelings_. And. I don’t know.”

Ryan scrubs his hands through his hair, making it stand up everywhere. Shane thinks he must be a lot drunker than Shane is himself, to be speaking so frankly.

“I think I know what you mean,” Shane says. “I’ve been wondering about the, like, function of the, uh, sex curse. Or whatever it was. Does it make you different? Or does it just remove inhibitions?”

This conversation is fraught, and Shane can feel himself heating up. He feels like he’s been caught out—like if Ryan looked up at him now he’d see right through him.

“Right,” Ryan agrees. “The thing is—God, I can’t believe I’m saying this shit to you—I think I liked it.”

Shane swallows hard. He closes his eyes and he’s hit with a series of memories, like a flipbook—Ryan’s face, flushed as Shane palms his dick through his sweatpants. The muscles in Ryan’s back rolling as Shane eases two fingers into him. Ryan’s face, wrecked and blissed-out, as Shane whispers that he’s doing _so good, Ryan, so good for me_.

“Hm,” Shane says noncommittally.

“I _think_ I liked it,” Ryan goes on, “but I can’t be sure. Maybe it was just the curse.  I can’t figure out what it means for me unless I can figure out whether that was real.”

Shane likes to think that he’s a scientist at heart. He majored in biology in college, he knows and trusts the scientific method, and he considers how the world of science would handle this problem.

“Okay, well, you just need to test it,” Shane says. “The, the hypothesis. Now that there are no freaky sex curses messing with your head and you’re in replicable conditions, you can probably conduct some experiments to figure it out.”

“Test it? What, like, Test Friends style?”

“Sure, there you go. ‘We Tried Fucking Anonymous Men in Gay Bars to Find Out if We Like Dick.’”

“Jesus Christ, dude.”

“No, but seriously. I just mean, what does anybody do when they think they might be into something new? They seek out the something and find out. Have you tried, uh, porn?”

“Jesus Christ, dude!”

“I’m just trying to help.”

“Yes. I’ve tried porn.”

Shane is deeply curious, but it feels impolite to ask for details.

“Well, did it work?”

“It didn’t _not_ work,” Ryan says after a moment, sounding embarrassed. “But it wasn’t really the same either.”

“Well, no, I imagine it wouldn’t be.”

“I just mean,” Ryan trails off, takes a breath, tries again. “I just mean, in Georgia I don’t know if it was, like, the sex curse of it all, the dick of it all, or the. Or the _you_ of it all.”

“Oh,” Shane says. If he was more on top of things he’d make a joke to ease this tension and make a mental note to get “the dick of it all” embroidered on something to give to Ryan for his birthday, but Ryan’s admission has stripped him of his faculties.

They sit in silence for what feels like a long time. Ryan has his head in his hands and seems to be slowly but surely melting off Shane’s couch. Shane knows he should be saying something, but he doesn’t want to be a creep about this. Ryan’s in a delicate place. _He’s_ in a delicate place.

“Please say something,” Ryan says, muffled, into his own hands.

“Sorry, I’m just thinking,” Shane says. “We can test that pretty easily too, I think.  If you want.”

“I might want.”

Shane decides that is as close to an invitation as he’s likely to get. He stands up, a little unsteady on his feet, the beer rushing to his head just a bit more than anticipated. He moves over to the couch, next to Ryan, and flops down emphatically enough to make the couch squeak in protest.

“Okay, Ryan,” he says. “Fair warning: I’m going to kiss you now. For science.”

Ryan laughs, and he’s still laughing when Shane bends down and presses their lips together.

They’re both nervous and kind of drunk, and it shows—their teeth clack together awkwardly, struggling to find the rhythm. Ryan’s probably not used to craning his neck like this to kiss, and Shane reaches down to wrap his hand on Ryan’s neck, supporting his jaw with his thumb. The angle’s still unnatural, and Shane’s not sure what to do with his other hand. With a girl he’d go for the hair, so he settles for that, grabbing a handful of hair just above the nape of Ryan’s neck.

“Hmm,” Ryan murmurs without breaking the kiss. He sits up on his knees, maneuvering carefully until he can clamber on top of Shane, knees on either side of Shane’s hips. He doesn’t sink down, doesn’t let them press together, but the angle’s much better and any hint of tentativeness in the kiss is gone. 

Shane can feel himself stiffening in his jeans. He wants to pull Ryan down against him, to feel if he’s on his way to hard too, but he doesn’t want to freak him out either.  He pulls out of the kiss to mouth at Ryan’s neck. _Do I have a neck thing_? he wonders.

Things seem to be going pretty well, but the moment Shane’s mouth hits the spot under Ryan’s jaw where he’d marked him the week before—where a faint bruise still lingers, Shane realizes—Ryan’s whole body goes stiff and unyielding.

Ryan scrambles back from Shane like he’s been burned. His leg catches on Shane’s as he tries to stand up, so instead he ends up sort of _rolling_ off him and winds up half on the couch, half on the floor. He stands up, shakes his limbs out, rearranges himself in his pants, and beelines for the door.

“Okay,” Ryan says, his voice pinched and unnaturally high-pitched. “Well—thanks—that was—I need to go now.”

“Thanks?” Shane asks stupidly, trying to figure out what’s happening here.

“I’ve got stuff to do. Uh, long week, I’m really tired. See you!”

And just like that, Ryan’s out the door and gone, laptop in hand. It is the least graceful exit anyone has ever made.

Shane flops back on the couch. He should get up and lock the door, drink a glass of water, and go the fuck to bed. Instead he jerks off, hot and frantic, face pressed against the back of the couch so that when he comes he does so soundlessly. Then he falls asleep.

*

When Shane gets to work on Monday morning, Ryan’s already at his desk editing, headphones plugged in and firmly on his ears. He nods his head to Shane in acknowledgment, but otherwise he doesn’t say anything.

By lunchtime, Shane has the distinct impression that Ryan is avoiding him. He goes to eat earlier than usual, and when Shane wanders into the kitchen five minutes later Ryan isn’t there. Ryan doesn’t come back to his desk after lunch either, and Shane has to do two full laps of the office pretending to be looking for various people before he finds Ryan talking to Steven by the coffee machine.

“Bergara,” Shane says. “I need a word.  Now.  Please.”

It’s the _please_ that gets Steven’s attention. His eyebrows go up into his hairline and he whistles.

“Uh oh,” he says, nudging Ryan in the ribs. “Daddy’s angry!”

Ryan’s blush is immediate and noticeable, and Shane thinks that things are going off the rails here _very_ quickly. He grabs Ryan by the elbow, steering him away before Steven has a chance to notice the effect his words have created.

“See you later, Steven,” Shane says, zooming Ryan away.

“Ease up, dude, I can walk myself,” Ryan complains, shaking off Shane’s hand.

“Then walk,” Shane says. He realizes he actually _is_ pretty pissed, which might be unfair of him, but it’s how he feels all the same.

Seeking privacy, Shane takes them up to the Unsolved set, a little room on the second floor tucked back in a corner where nobody at the company bothers to go unless they’re shooting. Shane closes the door and locks it behind them, just to be sure.

“We’re not going to do this—this fucking rom-com thing,” Shane says the second the door locks.

“The what?”

“The rom-com, Ross and Rachel, will-they-won’t-they, avoiding each other like blushing teenagers thing. I’m almost thirty-two years old and I am too old for that shit, Ryan, I’m too old for it. I’ll get a fucking ulcer.”

“Oh,” Ryan says. “That’s right, I forgot you’re basically older than trees.”

“Shut up. You know I’m right.”

 “Who’s Ross and who’s Rachel in this scenario?” Ryan asks.

“I’m Ross because I’m smug and into science, and you’re obviously Rachel because you’re a brat with memorable hair,” Shane says. “But that’s not really the point.”

“That show really holds up,” Ryan muses out loud. “Wait. Is ‘memorable’ a compliment?”

“Can we please just talk about this like adults?” Shane asks. He’s pacing around the room now, which is difficult because it’s really not a big room.

Ryan worries at his lip, brings a hand up to rub at his mouth.

“I’m sorry I bailed on Friday,” he says.

“You didn’t _bail_. You physically threw yourself off of me and fled the scene like I tried to murder you, and then you didn’t text me back all weekend. You were drunk when you left, you could have been dead in a ditch all weekend for all I knew. I was worried about you, asshole.”  

“I freaked out, okay? I’m not proud of it, but I got scared, fight-or-flight kicked in, and I picked flight.”

“You got scared of _me_?” That one hurts like a punch to the gut, because it’s what Shane’s been afraid of since they got back from Savannah.

“Not _you_. Just. I feel like a completely different person than I was two weeks ago, and that’s scary as shit. I’m pushing 30, surely it’s too late to be finding this shit out about myself. And what the fuck is my mom going to say?”

Shane doesn’t think it’s fair to bring moms into this.

“People figure out new stuff about themselves all the time, Ry. You don’t just hit 25 and stop changing.”

“Everybody in your life is super chill,” Ryan says. “You could be like, _Oh, by the way I like dudes_ tomorrow and it won’t affect your life at all. There are people in my life who will be fucking _upset_.  I could lose people I love over this.”

Shane remembers, in the back of his mind, that Ryan went to Catholic school, high school and college both.

“You think it won’t affect my life to have fucked a friend, who’s a dude, who’s my coworker? You think it won’t affect my life that I want to do it again? I’m scared too, dude.”

“Do you?” asks Ryan. “Want to?”

“If you hadn’t run out on Friday I would absolutely have tried,” Shane says honestly. He’s just too tired, suddenly, to be coy about this. He wants, very much, for Ryan to stop panicking enough to kiss him again.

“But you said—last week, when we. You said you’d never thought about it before.”

“True. A failure of imagination on my part, clearly, but I don’t see any reason to punish present and future Shane for past Shane’s mistakes.”

“And it doesn’t freak you out that suddenly you want that? Zero to sixty?”

“A life-changing thing happened to us. Why is it surprising that we came out of it changed?”

Ryan doesn’t answer, and Shane forces himself to stop pacing and look at Ryan directly.

“Look, if the scientific method has prevailed and you’ve decided you don’t feel that way about me, or about dick, I respect that one hundred percent and I will back off immediately and never mention this again. The way this happened sucked, and I am so fucking sorry it went down like that, Ryan. I’d take it back if I could, but I can’t.”

Ryan perches himself on the desk.

“But if it is something you could want, I’d hate to see us dismiss it, because the sex was _really fucking good_ , Ryan. And because I—I like you, as a human person, I like being around you. And I’d really like to put those two things together and find out what happens.”

“This is ridiculous,” Ryan says. “Are you propositioning me right now, on our set?”

“Yeah, I guess I am. What, are you worried the horse might hear?”

“Nah,” Ryan says. “Or—neigh?”

“ _Dude_.”

“Good, right?!”

*

Suddenly they are making out against the desk. Shane doesn’t know if it’s Ryan’s God-awful pun that does it, or if he’s just a new Shane all around. Old Shane didn’t make out with people at work, but New Shane is physically incapable of preventing it.

New Shane is running his hands along Ryan’s arms, his back, his sides. Reaching down and around with long arms to grab Ryan’s ass and pull Ryan against him, reveling when Ryan moans into his mouth.

“Jesus,” Ryan breaks away, breathing heavily. “Your limbs are alarming.”

“I’m going to attack your neck now because I’ve become kind of obsessed with it,” Shane warns. “I wanted to let you know in advance because the last time I tried this you ran screaming from my apartment.”

“I didn’t—oh, shit, ahh— _scream_ ,” Ryan says, tilting his head back to grant Shane easier access, “but try not to leave marks this time, you fucking animal.”

A few minutes later, Ryan pulls away again.

“Shane,” he pants, “Hang on. I want to—I want to try something.”

He has a look on his face that Shane associates with Ryan volunteering to go stand in some creepy location alone in the dark for three minutes. Somewhere between grim determination and excitement. Shane has known for a long time that Ryan is thrilled by what terrifies him, that he gets off on the fear just as much as he hates it. Shane thinks he’s about to get a taste of what that means for him, and he’s not mad about it.

“Jesus,” he says. “Try away.”

Ryan slides to his knees.

Shane’s had a lot of blowjobs in his life—or at least a respectable number. But he’s not sure he’s ever received one from someone completely new to the act, from a giving perspective, and he wants to be supportive. _Oh Jesus_ , he thinks. And then, for the second time in just a few days, _what do I do with my hands?_

He allows himself to look down as Ryan unbuckles his belt with shaking fingers. He wants to reach down, to grab Ryan’s hands, to stop them shaking. He settles for resting one hand on Ryan’s head, very lightly, and bracing the other hand on the desk.

The brush of Ryan’s hand against Shane’s dick as he pulls down Shane’s zipper is almost, _almost_ too much. Shane wills himself to be polite, to not be pushy, to keep his hips still.

Ryan pulls Shane’s pants and underwear down together in one motion, springing backward a little like he’s trying to make sure Shane’s dick doesn’t hit him in the face. Shane wants to laugh so badly, but that feels rude, so he just bites his lip and rubs a finger along the shell of Ryan’s ear reassuringly.

Ryan wraps a hand around Shane’s dick, tentative. Careful. He leans in, hesitates—and for a moment he just _breathes_ on it.

Shane thinks he’s going to die, just actually fall over fucking _dead_ , if Ryan doesn’t put his mouth on him in the next ten seconds. Shane looks down again, and when he sees Ryan looking up at him through dark eyelashes his dick twitches.

Ryan fucking beams up at him.

“Oh, now who’s smug?” Shane says. He doesn’t say anything else, because Ryan chooses that moment to lean in and lick a stripe up the underside of Shane’s dick.

“Jesus fucking—fuck!”

Ryan puts his mouth around Shane’s dick and goes down as far as he can, which isn’t that far. He starts gagging, pulls back a little, tries again.

“Whoa, whoa, dude, easy. You don’t have to, like, hurt yourself.”

Ryan says something that sounds like it might be “shut up, Shane,” but it comes out “shhhmhhhph shhn.”

“Ambitious even when it comes to sucking me off,” Shane says. His dick twitches again, in Ryan’s mouth, and Shane realizes this is going to be over so, so quickly.

Ryan tests things out, finds a rhythm pretty quickly between hand and mouth. He’s inexpert, but he obviously knows what works, and it works really fucking well. He pulls back, licks all around the head of Shane’s dick, flattens his tongue and applies it to the frenulum in a way that makes Shane curse loudly and grab Ryan’s hair, politeness forgotten. He realizes with a jolt of arousal that Ryan has managed to undo his own pants, has a hand pressed to his own crotch as he sucks Shane off.

Shane wonders if Ryan spent time this weekend Googling “How to suck a dick.” He wants to validate the effort.

“You’re fucking amazing at this,” Shane tells Ryan, watching him lick his way down the shaft, back up to the head, and lick carefully at Shane’s slit. Shane wants to grab Ryan’s head, hold it very still, and fuck into it—wants to make Ryan gag and spit and tear up—but not as much as he wants Ryan to enjoy this, to want to do it again.

Ryan’s hand speeds up, his mouth performs a particularly tricky bit of suction, and Shane thinks nothing at all.

“Ry, I’m gonna—” Shane says, gritting his teeth, and everything goes white behind his eyes. He’d meant to give Ryan more warning than that, but his orgasm catches him by surprise.

Ryan pulls back, hand still working, and Shane comes all over his hand, his face, and the floor. He kneels there, somewhere between accomplished and shocked, while Shane catches his breath.

“Oh shit,” Shane says. “That was incredible, Bergara.”

“You came on my face, dude!” Ryan says, sounding indignant.

“Well, your face was right there, I couldn’t really aim elsewhere. I’m sorry. You look fucking fantastic, though. Come up here and kiss me.”

“I’ve got jizz on my face.”

“Yeah, but only a little. And it’s mine, so I think I’ll still kiss you if that’s okay.”

Shane tucks himself back in his pants as Ryan rises, and he pulls Ryan close and kisses him deep and dirty, with tongue, to let him know how okay he thinks it is. He spits on the hem of his shirt and gently rubs Ryan’s face clean.

“We’re going to laugh about this later,” he tells Ryan. “But now—”

Without preamble, Shane sticks his hand in Ryan’s pants. Ryan’s dick is hard and leaking, ready to come, and Shane laughs a little in Ryan’s ear.

“My little cocksucker,” he says. “You want to come, Ry?”

“Please,” Ryan says. “You dick,” he adds for good measure.

Shane jerks Ryan off hard and fast, a little relentless, using only precome to ease the going. It takes no time at all—just a few strokes—before Ryan comes, shaking and jerking. Shane bends down, pulls a long kiss from him as he comes.

They both breathe for a minute, wrapped around each other.

“You get kind of mean,” Ryan observes. “During sex. Like, also _not_ during sex, but it seems particularly noteworthy in the sex context. Forceful. In Georgia I thought it was the, you know, but now I think that’s just you.”

“I can try to be nicer, if it bothers you. I just get kind of” Shane gestures around the room, taking in Shane and Ryan and the jizz on the floor “into it, I guess.”

“No, I like it. It’s—hot. I was just observing.”

“I promise I’m also capable of being nice during sex. Like, _really_ nice,” Shane says. “So what’s the verdict?”

“Verdict?”

“Was it the sex curse of it all, or the dick of it all? Or the me of it all?”

“Ugh.”

Shane surveys the room looking for something to clean up with, and he finds nothing but their own clothes. They're just going to have to stay in here forever, until they die, probably. He can think of worse things.


End file.
